The 2025 numbers are in: organizations averaged 1,968 cyber attacks per week, according to Check Point's Security Report 2026 released this week. That's a 70% increase since 2023.
The asymmetry is stark. While 60% of executives reported AI-powered attacks against their organizations, only 7% had deployed AI defenses at scale. Cybercrime cost the global economy $10.5 trillion last year. Europe absorbed €300 billion in losses over five years, with 3.2 million DDoS attacks in the first half of 2025 alone.
The attacker advantage comes down to economics and speed. Automated attack tools cost as little as €60 per month, democratizing capabilities that previously required specialized skills. Attackers exploit one vulnerability while defenders must patch them all. The cycle has compressed from years to weeks.
77% of CISOs expect AI to replace or augment SOC roles, and 27% see it handling penetration testing and risk assessments, according to recent surveys. But deployment lags intent. Critical vulnerabilities often remain unpatched due to headcount constraints and legacy system complexity.
The challenge extends beyond detection. Adversarial machine learning can evade AI-based security systems. Prompt injection attacks against LLM-integrated applications are proliferating. Enterprise security teams need tools for adversarial example detection, prompt injection defense, and LLM robustness testing, but implementation remains patchy.
70% of enterprises now run AI agents in production, with many planning expansions. That creates new attack surfaces. Model poisoning, adaptive malware, and autonomous attacks are no longer theoretical, Moody's 2026 cyber outlook warns.
The talent gap compounds the problem. Organizations need security professionals who understand both traditional infosec and AI/ML systems. That hybrid skill set is rare and expensive.
History suggests defenders eventually catch up, but the lag time matters. Every week at current attack volumes means thousands of incidents. The question isn't whether AI will transform security operations. It's whether defenders can close the deployment gap before the next major breach proves the cost of moving slowly.